A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, freemarket monetary system, not the topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This issue of the Cato Journal examines the case for alternatives to central banking and the reforms needed to move toward free-market money.

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Americans are finally enjoying an improving economy after years of recession and slow growth. The unemployment rate is dropping, the economy is expanding, and public confidence is rising. Surely our economic crisis is behind us. Or is it? In Going for Broke: Deficits, Debt, and the Entitlement Crisis, Cato scholar Michael D. Tanner examines the growing national debt and its dire implications for our future and explains why a looming financial meltdown may be far worse than anyone expects.

The Cato Institute has released its 2014 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. “Libertarianism is not just a framework for utopia,” Cato’s David Boaz writes in his book, The Libertarian Mind. “It is the indispensable framework for the future.” And as the new report demonstrates, the Cato Institute, thanks largely to the generosity of our Sponsors, is leading the charge to apply this framework across the policy spectrum.

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Don’t Tighten Travel Rules

Calls for tightening congressional travel rules to forbid legislators from taking trips paid for by non-profit organizations and private corporations are misguided.

Current ethics rules sufficiently govern legislators’ behavior and enable individual transgressions to come to light. Lawmakers aren’t exactly given carte blanche. The rules detailed in the 71-page “Gifts and Travel” handbook forbid legislators from accepting trips paid for by lobbyists or foreign government agents. Subsidized trips are limited to a week in length, and legislators must submit disclosure forms detailing benefits received.

Private sponsors’ motives are no worse than those of their public counterparts. Private interests seek to educate congressional guests while propagating a particular point of view. However, when Pentagon bureaucrats, for example, send legislators to view new weaponry or visit bases and combat theaters, they, too, exercise a propaganda function. They seek to protect their budgets and to make their department or agency a more sympathetic recipient of public funds.

The assumption that the relationship between lawmakers and private sponsors is inherently corrupt (subsidized travel leads to legislative or regulatory favoritism) exists without supporting evidence. A link between a lawmaker’s travel and legislative behavior is rarely established. If these trips “buy” anything, it’s access to politicians, not influence on policymaking. The importance of such access, however, is overestimated.

Research finds that private money follows votes far more often than votes follow money. Legislators’ voting records reflect their ideology, partisanship and assessment of their constituents’ interests.

The mere appearance of impropriety, absent evidence of wrongdoing, is insufficient rationale for harsher rules. In a self-regulating political marketplace, it’s an individual lawmaker’s responsibility to accept the political risk inherent in accepting travel subsidies from private sources. Lawmakers may or may not choose to accept an invitation. The choice should be theirs, similarly the risks and rewards of their decisions.

Stricter travel rules aren’t necessary. Enforcement of existing rules can protect the public interest. Anything more is overkill.